Our hero, on his part, sees a vision of dazzling beauty—dark eyes, golden tresses, scarlet lips, a slim yet daintily-rounded figure in costly lace, with knots of purple, golden-hearted pansies. Around the slender, stately column of the white throat a necklace of pansies formed of dark, purple amethysts with diamond centers radiating fire—a birthday gift from her father.
"Pray do not go," Captain Lockhart says, persuasively, with the winning tongue of a soldier. "The children have been eagerly expecting you. Do not damp their pleasure. Rather let me withdraw."
"No, no," Lady Vera says, hastily, as he crosses to the door, her haughtiness melting for the moment under his chivalrous manner. "We will both stay—that is, I can only give the children a moment. I am going to a ball."
"So am I, directly, with my sister and Sir Harry. It is very strange Nella did not tell me she had a young lady guest. I am," smiling under the brown mustache, "puzzled over your name."
"It is Vera Campbell," she answers, with a slight flush.
"Lady Vera," pipes the prim nurse from her corner, obsequiously.
"Lady Vera," he says, with a bow and smile; then: "Thank you for the favor. Mine is Philip Lockhart."
"Captain Phil," shouts Mark, anxious that his uncle shall abate no jot of his soldierly dignity.
"He has brought us a great big box," Dot confides to Lady Vera, triumphantly at this moment.
"Which I will leave him to open. My maid has not finished me yet," fibs Vera, and so makes her escape, leaving Captain Phil to the tender mercies of his small relatives, who give him no peace until the heavy box is unpacked, and its contents paraded before their dazzled and rejoicing sight.